system setup for large models

I am helping configure a new Windows 10 PC to run large models( >1M dof) with NX Nastran v10. The machine has a 1Tb SSD, 256 Gb RAM and duel 8-core Xeon processors. What settings for memory, smem, and buffpool would be best for modal frequency response with 1000+ modes? Also, how many cores should I specify with parallel=?

Betreff: system setup for large models

Thanks for the references. They were very helpful. We have adjusted the default values of memory, smem, and buffpool to use more RAM since the machine has 256Gb. After running a few test models, it looks like parallel=4 gives the best performance. The last thing we have to try is turning off hyperthreading. I'm hopeful that will give us a litte more speed.